Hitt the 6ix – Fuel Training + Strive Life Team Up for OSNP

On Saturday morning I had the opportunity to take part in my very first Fuel Training Club special event, an event that I signed up for from the moment that it was announced due to the charitable focus and the ability to sweat my way through this city while meeting folks from both Fuel West and Fuel East!

What is Hiit the 6ix

Hiit the 6ix was conceptualized by Greg Hetherington (Founder of Fuel Training Club) and Martin Reader + Ryan Caicco (Founders of Strive Life) who are all lululemon Ambassadors for the Queen West store. The team wanted to have a fit event for their students which could also help give back to the community that we all love to sweat in! From this idea Hitt the 6ix was born, a charitable High Intensity Interval Training (HIIT) at different stations throughout Toronto in support of local charity. A community initiative brought to you by Fuel Training Club and Strive Life. Together, we believe that we can combine our forces to help raise funds and awareness for the Ontario Student Nutrition Program. Kids are no educated enough on where their food comes from nor are they provided healthy eating options at the elementary and high school levels. Through this event we hope to change that.

Morning Of

After a few kilometers of SeaWheeze training with the my run family at Tribe Fitness I dipped of the route at Strachan and Adelaide at the Strive Life headquarters to kick off event! Fueled up by coffee, apples from the OSNP team and swaggered up by the lululemon Toronto crew, 100 of Fuel Training Club’s + Strive Life’s members were ready to get their swear on through the city. I should also mention that the fab folks at luluemon TO supplied everyone participating with an epic Hiit the Six tank top or t-shirt for us to rock as we pounded pavement across the city.

The Workout

Warm-up

We started the day with something we are all familiar with at Fuel Training Club and Strive Life – a dynamic warm-up. The Strive Life crew lead us through a ladder sequence which had us performing a drill and then completing a jogging lap around the mini block, we repeated this six times. After everyone was warmed up we moved into a mobility/movement series to get everyone stretched out and ready to take on the workouts ahead over the course of the morning.

After a group photo to mark the start of the inaugural event and we were off making our way down Adelaide to St. Andrew Park for our first of three workouts!

Workout #1 – Fuel Training Circuit

The crew of 100 strong made there way east on Adelaide about 1km to St. Andrew Park, along the way the fab folks of lululemon Toronto directed us to ensure that we were headed in the right direction to our first destination.

Greg (Founder of Fuel Training Club) met us at the park ready to go with some of our standard Fuel Training equipment and two of our fav training as Shelby + Jamie to demo good and bad form to the group. The circuit was aggressive and over 30 minutes it would see us rotating through each station once before we could say we were done! We were asked to partner up in groups of five, preferably with folks we didn’t know. I was luck enough to workout alongside two of our #6amsweat crew Ariel + Brock, along with two folks from Strive Life.

Before we kicked it off Greg has us all do a fire drill – basically you spend 10 seconds at each station figuring out your form + rotation, it was a bit of a test with a group of this size but everyone seemed to have a grasp on where they were going once it was go time! With the music pumping and the neighbourhood watching on we were ready to get to work!

Workout #1: 40 seconds on : 10 seconds off

Plate Press

Split Lunge

Park Bench Knee Tucks

Sprawl

TRX Tree Rows

Split Lunge

BB Curl to Press

Sprawl

Slam Ball

Split Lunge

Resistant Band Pull Apart

Sprawl

KB Goblet Squat

Split Lunge

Plate Press Straight Arms

Sprawl

Monster Walk w/ Resistant Band

Split Lunge

Tree Ball

The workout was INTENSE, but I expected nothing less from my coach in kicking-off Hiit the Six! The heat was getting to everyone and we were promised water would be at Fuel West once we dropped the equipment off before we jetted off to the next station. We were rewarded with BioSteel bottles that we were asked to keep with us to refill throughout the event at each station. Can I just call to attend for a minute just how genius this product is! If you haven’t had a chance to get your hands on Ready-to-Drink (RTD) I suggest you do because they are fun to just experience the package design of this refuel product!

Workout #2: Strive Life Tabata Workout

After a quick refuel it was time to hit the road and run to the Steam Whistle Roundhouse to tackle Workout #2, this run was about 1.5km in distance and challenged folks to work through the post workout leg fatigue that we had built up thanks to all of the weighted exercises and split lunges we crushed during Workout #1!

When we arrived at Steam Whistle Roundhouse it was time to kick-off Strive Life‘s workout, Ryan and Martin informed the group that after a stretch session we would be easing into the prep sequences to lead us into an intense Tabata series.

What is Tabata: Tabata training is one of the most popular forms of high-intensity interval training (HIIT). It consists of eight rounds of ultra-high-intensity exercises in a specific 20-seconds-on, 10-seconds-off interval.

I was enjoying the prep stages we were working through as I needed a stretch and they reminded me a lot of a vinyasa yoga class, but before I knew it these guys were taking it to the next level! After leading us through the prep Ryan + Martin demoed each of the four workouts we would be doing as part of the Tabata series.

Workout: 20 seconds on : 10 seconds off x4 for each element of the workout

Low Squat to Walkout

Skaters

Side Plank Twisted Crunches

180 Degree Burpees

Tabata style workouts are new to me, and while we do something similar at Fuel it’s not exactly what the Tabata style is and I found personally the muscle fatigue from doing the same exercise four times in a row to be quite different from when an exercise is part of a series of movements in a workout. Everyone survived and was working tough to survive the heat by hydrating and preparing to run to the next workout station. Before we could depart we all gathered for the first of many photos + videos that I am sure will surface on social media or the internet soon if they already haven’t.

Workout #3: Team Work Makes Dream Work

The run to the last and final workout station of Hitt the Six was the lengthiest (almost 2km in length), at this point some works were fatiguing from a number of different causes – heat, not hydrating enough, not enough sleep last night, not being used to running, running to fast, pushing to hard, hangover from the night before, etc. Those in the group who are familiar with running the city tried to warn everyone that this section would be the longest, most busy in terms of bike + people traffic and that it was best to pull back your pace to take your time. Some listened, others did not but either way we all made it to Sugar Beach for our last and final workout of the series!

After arriving at Sugar Beach – the far end of the promenade to be exact – we had another opportunity to hydrate and catch out breaths before we tackled the last workout of the day. This workout was a co-led by Fuel Training Club and Strive Life. We were asked to link up with a partner who we didn’t know and I opted to partner up with a guy named Will who I had been running along side throughout most of the morning.

There were two parts to our final workout:

Plank + Bridge Over Under – Partner A holds plank while Partner B jumps over their legs, Partner A in plank will transition to downward dog while Partner B climbs underneath. (1 minute each)

Partner Squat Hold + Sprints – our duo had to become a quad to complete this last section, one partner duo held a back-to-back Partner Squat while the other pair sprinted from one end of the park to the other. (Each duo completed the pattern x2)

The Final Stretch

Without further adieu it was time to race back to Fuel East for burgers, beer and beats! Everyone was anxious for food and it was a literally a race back to the finish line. Impact Kitchen was fueling everyone up with Burgers, Asian Slaw and healthy baked treats, as well as cold brews courtesy of the folks at Steam Whistle. Our friends from Blacktoe were also on site to help folks ensure they had the best kicks on their feet for the summer of training ahead.

The Fuel Training Club + Strive Life Team Members

Final Thoughts

Truthfully this event was unlike anything I have ever been a part of, if you read my blog frequently you know that I always try to make it out to new events in the city to keep things diverse and allow myself to try something new frequently. I’ve been trying all winter to get out to Fuel event as I always hear amazing things about it and really am trying to be a bigger part of this community of fun, fit folks! Coming out to Hitt the Six was such a FANTASTIC experience, it was not only a great way for me to meet + connect with so many other folks from the Fuel community, but I also had the chance to challenge myself and see how far I’ve come in my fitness since starting at Fuel in November!

This event has a feel good component to it as well, while we were sweating we were also raising money for an awesome cause in our local community OSNP! Since the event concluded we have been notified that we were able to raise over $3000.00 together for this community initiative to help provide local school students with healthy food and snacks.

The event from start to finish was run smoothly, efficiently and really without much of a delay in timing – very impressive for it being the first time that this event was being put on by this crew! MAD LOVE to the folks at lululemon Toronto who spent their day racing around on bikes, holding up signs to give us directions on where we were running to next, taking pictures/GO Pro videos/content galore and cheering us on for over 3 hours as we got our sweat on as a community!

There were a number of integral people in making this event happen – Fuel Training Club trainers, Strive Live trainers, lululemon Toronto folks, Impact Kitchen, Bio Steel, Blacktoe and so many others! The workouts were fierce, the running was swift and the beats were fresh – even if the hungover neighbours were not super jazzed!

I honestly can’t wait to see where Greg, Ryan and Martin take this event in the future, I know for sure that 2017’s event will be bigger and better already!